Today we had our orientation seminar in the morning. It lasted a couple of hours but we managed to make it fun and engaging and we all had a great time! After the seminar, some of us jumped in the pool, and others went on a little tour of the very small town of Aquiares – we got to see a little bit more of this cozy town, surrounded by coffee, and old buildings, and nature. We even got to feed some horses!

In the afternoon, we hopped on the bus to go visit downtown Turrialba. We stopped at the central park, a unique park considering the fact it was a soccer field and there are chickens living in there (some random person brought a couple and now there are 5 chickens and they sleep on the trees and random people feed them). Also, we found a local artisan who makes necklaces with stones and most of the students bought some as souvenirs.

Then, we went to see the old train station, where the city of Turrialba started to grow around. Turrialba was founded in 1903 but it has been occupied since 12000 years B.C. In Turrialba, there’s a very active volcano, an archeological site, a world-famous postgrad school called CATIE, and it is also where Rawlings International has been operating since the ’80s.

We had the chance to see “la feria”, which is basically a place where all the local producers gather and sell their products directly to the locals (you may know it as a farmer’s market back home!), we bought papayas, lychees, mangos, and bracelets as well. We then returned to our base house where we had some more downtime, ate burgers for dinner, and had a fun reflection and nightly meeting.